LA Weekly Gold Standard 2011

Fabulous restaurants, fabulous Chefs, and amazing food. well done Mr. Gold!
All that said, there is definitely some room for improvement as it was a warm day and it was near unbearable inside the tent. I don’t think they took into account having all the burners running at once inside the tent. We had VIP tickets and it was bearable until the general admission folks were let in then it was dripping sweaty hot. Luckily for us, we had already pretty much sampled everything we wanted to try so we mostly stayed in the outdoor areas to keep cool.
I’d definitely go back but VIP is the way to go… we were able to sample everything we wanted to try before the G.A. folks came in and really enjoyed ourselves.

Last Sunday, I attended Jonathan Gold’s 3^rd annual food & wine festival sponsored by the LA Weekly magazine and hosted in Los Angeles’ Petersen Automotive Museum.
Located across the street from the LA county museum of art, I thought it was a great choice of venue to host the event, especially given my love of fast cars old and new. It gave me something to do while my sister was waiting in line to enter the festival:
The main event was located on their rooftop area, winery & beer booths centrally positioned with the restaurants set up along the outer rows
By the time we entered at 1pm for general admission, the crowds of ravenous foodies were in full force. Unfortunately a few booths ran out of food early, namely Mozza and Ludobites, but with all the other countless participants cooking away, I didn’t dwell much on what I missed.
The selection of restaurants reflected Mr Gold’s already broad food tastes from the finer establishments like the 2 Michelin star Providence, to local mom & pop BBQ and hot dog places… and everything in between.
Not all participating restaurants advertised were able to appear at the event and some new ones took their place, but overall I felt it was well organized and run smoothly. Despite having to constantly make my way through the endless sea of fellow food lovers to get to various booths, the attendees were a mostly civilized, polite bunch and there was never any unpleasantness as we were all there to share a common passion. Also the various chefs and cooks in attendance, despite working furious to keep the hungry masses satisfied, never seemed to let the crowds and stress bring them down, always putting on a smiling, friendly face.
A big thumbs up for the Gold Standard and for the most part, I think it succeeded in living up to its name.

i literally ate and drank continuously for 4 hours because i am a disgusting human being. in fact, this entire event was only an amuse bouche to my friends annual bacon party, which was another 40 courses deep.
this is my third time at the gold standard. which is now firmly in the roster of food and wine events that i always attend in LA (others are the taste of the nation, the club culinaire picnic des chefs, project by project, and if i’m feeling really baller, the AWFF)
the improvement this year upon previous years were the beverages. if you could find them, there were some pretty good wines, including big names like silver oak. the old fashioneds from coles/​varnish were fucking good as usual.
i think i really stretched out my stomach because i’ve been starving every day since.

Thank you Jonathan Gold! To have a collection of over 40 well known and chef and family run restaurants at one event was a treat. We were happily surprised that there wasn’t a long wait for the tastings, and only a few ran out of food. The tastings were heavy on pork, with my favorites including the pork belly, pig ear, kumquat, and lardon banh mi from Palate. The sweetness of the kumquat balanced the pork perfectly. We also enjoyed the refreshing pineapple w/​curry pâté de fruit from Providence so much that we went back for more.
It was great to see smaller restaurants get their time in the limelight. The chefs from Good Girl Dinette were so gracious, and their ground pork and pot pie were a great way to end the evening. I will definitely be making a stop in Highland Park.
There were plenty of pours of wine, sparkling wine, and beer. Next year VIP tickets (allows you to enter the event an hour earlier than the rest), and bring a plate w/​a cutout wine glass holder, so that you can have one hand free to eat!